Comment

#1 editing PHP files is not recommended and has nothing to do with changing the appearance of vBulletin.

#2 The appearance of vBulletin is determined by HTML templates (160 different snippets of HTML pieced together to make up each page) and the Style Sheet, both of which are managed through the vBulletin Admin Control Panel.

You can change the borders, spacing, and colors of vBulletin without any HTML knowledge. To rearrange items in vBulletin's layout, you will need a rudimentary knowledge of HTML.

You cannot edit this HTML in Dreamweaver because of interdependencies and PHP variables which will not evaluate properly.

Comment

I will just say there are many places where Jelsoft's efforts can be placed. Trying to make a WYSIWYG for templates is not a place I think their efforts should be applied to. Learning HTML is really not that hard, folks.

Comment

What's astounding? That some people don't use the canned version of things?

Sometimes you need to do some PHP edits if you're customizing it. These types of edits are fewer and farer between with the product hook system that was implemented a while back.

Granted, if it's only the appearance you want to tweak, that's what the built in style manager is for. vB has made some efforts to give people a hand in that area such as the template history system and compare.